


Overload

by orphan_account



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: A little gore, All loyalty missions completed, F/M, Paragon Commander Shepard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 03:46:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1181503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Commander Shepard sees the Normandy as her home, and the crew as her family.<br/>So when one of her squad is left behind while escaping an impossible mission, every instinct in her body, every fiber and nerve, pushes her biotics way past human limits to save her family.</p><p>As pain and confusion wrecks her body, each of her crew visits, fearing that the Normandy SR-2 medbay might be her final resting place. If they have anything to say to her this is the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Overload

"Commander, you got unread messages at your private terminal."

Kelly gave her a quick smile, before getting back to her work. Commander Shepard walked past her, noticing the little noise the galaxy map made when she did so. It had taken her some time to stop twitching every time the hologram of her ship unexpectedly zoomed out of vision, replaced by a large, spinning universe.

A message from her current boss, The Illusive Man himself, laid waiting for her.

_"Shepard,_

_We have received word that several of our operatives have disappeared during what should have been a routine mission. I know you got your hands full, especially after discovering the reaper IFF, but my sources confirm that this is more than just comm interference._

_Go to the mining facility on Aequitas. I am forwarding the coordinates to the Normandy._

_Prepare for the worst."_

That was it. Shepard frowned, re-reading the strange request.

Lost cerberus operatives? Mining facility? "Prepare for the worst"? The Illusive Man had tricked her before, with Horizon and the collector ship, and she found little comfort in the lack of information. Anything could have caused the communication with his staff to end, so whatever he wasn't sharing had to make it worthy of her time.

She checked with EDI if it was okay to take the ship. She said she could postpone integrating the IFF into the Normandy's systems for a while, giving them time to check it out, but she too offered words of caution. It was obvious that a direct order from high command was not to be ignored, and after Miranda assured her it had to be important, Shepard grudgingly picked out her team for this unusual mission.  
Jack, still putting her trust in pure force and barriers rather than armor, and Miranda.

Aequitas was a strange mixture of rusty red and cobalt blue. It was freezing cold, uninhabitable, and still Shepard had heard rumors that hot springs were hiding under their feet somewhere.  
The shuttle landed in what looked like a bowl of stone, pillars of rock rising above them, and the moment she stepped out the rain started drumming against her helmet.  
“This feels wrong...” Jack murmured over the radio as she jumped out of the vehicle, followed by her polar opposite.  
  
“Our objective is to find the missing staff, and extract them if necessary.”  
“And if they're all dead?”  
“Then we don't, miss smartass, and focus on finding out why they died.”  
“Sounds like a plan to me.”  
Jack and Shepard had a habit of bickering when facing unknowns.

Husks. Husks everywhere.  
Between scattered data pads talking about an “alien device” uncovered within these mines, there was nothing but moaning hoards of repurposed humans, the blue light of their wires casting sickly light over the skin-less flesh. Shepard had heard a screech of terror over the radio, but was unsure if it was Miranda, Jack of maybe even herself.  
Despite lacking in armor or barriers, the wave of hostiles had turned into a downright tsunami flooding the halls behind them, driving them to run for their lives. Shepard could hear the desperate pants of her squadmates on the comm channel as they closed in on the shuttle.  
“Go!” She could hear herself shout, spinning around to lay a singularity in the middle of the oncoming husks. So many of them got caught in it, like insects around a light bulb, but it didn't even make a dent in their collected force.  
Miranda fell. An abomination, faster than the rest, was latched onto her back and mindlessly clawing at her clothes with it's huge, festering hands. Shepard pulled it into the air in a blue haze and heard it howl, before defying every instinct she had and running back to pick her teammate up.  
Jack shouted at her but kept running towards their escape, watching hopelessly as a city's worth of cybernetic zombies threw themselves over their prey.  
She got to the shuttle, her cursing echoing into the comm channel.

Meanwhile, Shepard had got to Miranda. Fueled by pure panic she had frozen her in stasis, rendering her unable to move or fight, but also making her untouchable by the enemy for a short time.  
Registering somewhere in the back of her mind that she hadn't heeded the cooldown her biotics needed, she ran once more, only turning to pull the paralyzed Miranda towards her.  
She couldn't feel the heat building. She couldn't hear her armor's inbuilt diagnostics setting of alarms as biotic blue flew from her palms. Her vision was buzzing, the circuits in her brain going haywire, and a panic so basic it seemed to be lodged in her bone marrow made sure she didn't act logically.  
Attack after attack launched towards her enemies. The corpses formed a solid wall, but identical copies climbed it and rushed towards her, seemingly driven by the same primal instincts that she was.  
She got the last member of her squad into the shuttle just as the stasis was wearing off, turning around to face reaper tools advancing _way too fast_.  
“Commander!”  
“Shepard!”  
Silence.

Out-of-body experiences are mainly described by the dying. It is said to be a calming, numb sensation, as a person's vision slowly leaves the physical eyes and hovers somewhere above the body. Looking down at your own corpse should be terrifying, but those who claim to have had this experience agree that there's no fear in the plane between mortal and deceased. Just a vague, serene sensation of flying, watching the world from a completely new point of view.  
Shepard watched her own hands lift into the air. She smelt burning, heard sizzling somewhere in her armor, and felt cracks against her skull as the wires of her helmet snapped right in half.  
There was no pain.  
Awe was the only feeling as a storm of biotics flowed from her. Not just from her palms, as usual, but from her arms and legs and chest. The drums of rushing blood filled her ears as a mist of blue engulfed the oncoming husks, practically melting them to puddles at her feet, but the smell of burning flesh was filling the inside of her suit to the point where it was hard to breathe in it.  
Something, _someone,_ yanked her backwards. The shuttle door closed in front of her.  
Existence was a hard, smooth and cold place. Limited to the metal of their escape vehicle, Shepard found herself staring into death, wondering what it wanted.  
It talked to her a little. Small-talk, like they were sitting next to each other on the bus, nothing big. No commitments.  
Then Jack punched her in the jaw hard enough to revive her.

“Commander, stay with me!”  
Miranda was red in the face and panting like a dog, grabbing Shepard's arm and ripping the armor off as fast as humanly possible. Silver flashed in her hand, but it was difficult to stay conscious enough to get a good look at it. A horrible stink of decay and fire filled the air like fog, not contained within her armor any more.  
The commander's head lolled into just the right angle to look at her now exposed arm.  
It looked like lasagna's ugly sibling.  
“Goddamn, Shepard! Don't you dare fucking die!” Jack growled.  
“Can't Cerberus afford implant safeguards?!”  
“Of course we have safeguards! She bypassed them!”  
Amazing. Miranda and Jack arguing over her dying body.  
Shepard tried to whisper, praying to every god she knew of that the pain would keep away for a little longer. The sight of her own flesh turned into scorched, bloody mush led her to believe hell was waiting for her, and she wasn't looking forward to the ride.  
“You overloaded!” Jack shouted. A nauseous sort of squelch came from her other arm, the one Jack was doing something to, and Shepard decided not to look at it.  
“Just went and fucking blew your implants out! Don't you even know how biotics work?! You release energy, Shepard! Huge amounts of energy if you're good at it, and shape it into a weapon, and _this_ ,”  
Blood and bile fought for a place on her tongue when subject zero pulled her arm up, allowing a great and absolutely disgusting view of the butchered mess it had become.  
“Happens if you ignore the fucking cooldown periods more than once!”  
“Got it,” Miranda suddenly said, making both heads turn to her. She had been using a small pocket knife to cut the implant out, and it was currently laying on the floor.  
It was formed like a long, thick tube, a little shorter than her forearm. Metal and wiring surrounded a chamber filled with what should have been blue liquid, which had turned thick and brown. It was practically vibrating, sparks flying out of it, and making a high-pitched whistling noise.  
Miranda threw the knife to Jack, expecting her to cut the other implant out, but Jack was staring at the buzzing device on the floor.  
The commander saw it too. Miranda turned around just in time to watch the glass crack, gas building inside the little chamber, and then the world imploded.

There was two implants left in her body. One in her left arm, one in her neck, and both of them had exploded while still lodged in her flesh. The result was a shitload of chemicals being released into her system, chemicals that had no business being there.

Commander Shepard dearly wished she could stay unconscious. The thing was, when she woke up, her nerves were on fire and her very bones seemed to melt in the heat.  
She howled like a wounded animal. Jack swore, Miranda had lost the ability to talk, and both of them were working frantically to get the broken implants out of their leader, but all they accomplished was digging broken fragments of glass and metal out of the lumps of flesh that still stuck to her skeleton.  
It wasn’t much.  
Jack shouted at the pilot who was already pushing the little shuttle to its limits. Breathing, thinking, and just being alive in general was excruciating.  
At some point they landed. Shepard was sobbing too hard to breathe and passed out again.

Humans were never meant to deal with this kind of pain. It came from her own insides, like her body was betraying her, and with every desperate beat of her heart the pain spread further. Every single cell in her body was making an uproar, and as someone carried her up to the med bay, she vaguely registered herself begging him to let he die.  
The great Commander Shepard, savior of the citadel, begging for mercy was seemingly more terrifying than fighting the collectors.


End file.
